The SVCDC can strategically buy, sell, and redevelop land, acting as a land bank. Land banks advance community development goals, primarily by acquiring and holding strategic properties until they can be transformed into affordable housing or repurposed for community needs such as retail, parks, or flood mitigation open spaces. Land banking prevents speculative price increases and ensures land remains dedicated to public benefit. Land banks can acquire, maintain, rehabilitate, lease, sell, or even demolish properties to serve community objectives.
Image credit: Community Progress, https://communityprogress.org/publications/progress-points-land-banks
Land banks are traditionally established in areas with lower housing costs and abundant tax-delinquent properties, but they could also play a role in high-cost areas with limited available land like Sonoma Valley, by strategically acquiring and holding centrally located properties for future affordable housing. Learn more here and here.
To create a land bank, establish a public authority or vest an existing authority or nonprofit with the capability to acquire, hold, manage, and redevelop properties in order to increase productive use and safeguard opportunities for affordable housing. This authority could operate as a Joint Powers Authority that enables two or more public agencies (such as the City and County of Sonoma) to collaborate and share funding, expertise, and political influence to acquire and manage land for public uses, including affordable housing.
Properties such as those previously owned by the Ken Mattson and Le Fevre companies present opportunities for land banking. The various properties in the complex of Mattson and LeFevre portfolios owe over $1 million in delinquent mortgage payments and property taxes on tens of properties across Sonoma Valley.
Property acquired by a land bank could, after rehabilitation or redevelopment, be owned and stewarded long-term by a Community Land Trust (see Strategy 6 Use community land trusts to reduce costs for residents).